>>>>Would you consider implementing an individual time 'offset' much like
>>the UI-Digi firmware intended to have but didn't quite work right?
>>(Well, it didn't seem to work for me at all, really...)
>>>>-Ian ZL1VFO
>>>>> Could you comment a bit further on what this is supposed to do. I've
> read a couple of pieces of on line documentation, but I'm afraid I still
> don't understand what it's getting at.
> Thanks,
> John W2FS
I get the APRS-Sig via digest mode, so my apologies in advange if
anyone has explained this before I receive the digest & find out
myself.
OK. Consider the folowing. We start with the time that power is
applied (i.e. it's switched on) to the repeater controller as 0
(zero), and for the sake of the example, it'll be midnight.
To keep the explanation simpler, I'll use only 3 beacons.
Beacon 1 has an offset of 15min, and a rate of 30 min (say a path of
ID, or nothing perhaps) It should beacon at 1/4 past, and 1/4 to every hour
Beacon 2 has an offset of 30min, and a rate of 60 min (say a path of
wide2-1) so it beacons at 0:30, 1:30, 2:30, 3:30 etc
Beacon 3 has an offset of 0min, and a rate of 120 min (say a path of
wide2-2) so it beacons at 0:00, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00 etc
so we get
12:00 Beacon 3
12:15 Beacon 1
12:30 Beacon 2
12:45 Beacon 1
1:00
1:15 Beacon 1
1:30 Beacon 2
1:45 Beacon 1
2:00 Beacon 3
2:15 Beacon 1
2:30 Beacon 2
2:45 Beacon 1
3:00
3:15 Beacon 1
3:30 Beacon 2
3:45 Beacon 1
4:00 Beacon 3
4:15 Beacon 1
4:30 Beacon 2
4:45 Beacon 1
5:00
5:15 Beacon 1
5:30 Beacon 2
5:45 Beacon 1
6:00 Beacon 3
ok, so the immediate area gets beacons 1 & 2 every 15 min - this is
probably excessive to some degree, but I'm only using this as an
example, and every so often, we miss a beacon. 1:00,3:00,5:00. (Hey
good use for a 4th beacon, offset 1hr, interval 2 hrs...)
With the UI-Digi, what appears to happen is that even if one sets the
OFFSET time to some non-zero amount (big, small, whatever), the
apparent offset it uses is zero. So in the above example, we would
actually get this (below)
12:00 Beacon 1 Beacon 2 Beacon 3
12:15
12:30 Beacon 1
12:45
1:00 Beacon 1 Beacon 2
1:15
1:30 Beacon 1
1:45
2:00 Beacon 1 Beacon 2 Beacon 3
2:15
2:30 Beacon 1
2:45
3:00 Beacon 1 Beacon 2
3:15
3:30 Beacon 1
3:45
4:00 Beacon 1 Beacon 2 Beacon 3
4:15
4:30 Beacon 1
4:45
5:00 Beacon 1 Beacon 2
5:15
5:30 Beacon 1
5:45
6:00 Beacon 1 Beacon 2 Beacon 3
You end up with 'Clusters' of 2 or 3 beacons.. One can mitigate this
to some degree by using numbers that aren't a multiple of others
(Primes, perhaps), but it's a pain-in-the-backside & would be nice
to have the Interval + Offset times work as they were intended
(according to the configuration text, anyway...)
Hope that clarifies things..
And on a related note, if you are open to a wish list, the ability to
somehow connect 2 or perhaps 3 TNC-Xs up together to cross-digi would
be a great thing.
Think 144.39 Tx/Rx, 144.99 Rx, 70cm backbone/link Tx/Rx
73s
Ian Zl1VFO
P.S. Has the TNC-X yahoo groups reflector died of under-use...?
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